56 - To Thomas Percy, [London, 1773]

Summary

The enigmatic tone of this brief message suggests that a matter of reasonable import was afoot, possibly the meeting between the two men at Northumberland House on 28 April 1773 in which Percy took from Goldsmith's dictation a memorandum of biography which would form the basis for his 1801 memoir. St James’s Palace in the Mall area of London was not far from Northumberland House, and it may be that the two men met at the former before repairing to the latter.

The copy-text is the manuscript in the Beinecke Library, Yale University. It was first published as a ‘Doubtful Letter’ by Balderston, who had the text from the November 1895 sale catalogue of William Evarts Benjamin, noting that ‘The provenance of the letter is unknown, and the MS., although it has been traced to a sale in March, 1925, has not been available for examination’ (BL, 147n1). There is a facsimile image of the letter excerpted from an American Art Association sale catalogue of 18 March 1925 in the New York Public Library; however, it is unclear whether Balderston was able to view this image in order to assess the handwriting. The original note, now at Yale, can more safely be confirmed as Goldsmith’s. In the top right-hand corner in a near-contemporary hand is written ‘73 G’, which may indicate that the note is from 1773. Underneath the signature is written, in light red ink and a different hand, ‘the Poet’. Further down the page there is a biographical note, in another near-contemporary hand: ‘Oliver Goldsmith was born at Roscommon in Ireland, in A.D. 1729, ob. Ap. 1774 at 45’.

Dear Percy

I thank you for your trouble and advice, which shall be follow^d. I will wait at the palace at two.

Goldsmith